Itzhak Perlman

Virtuoso of the Violin

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I always mention to my students…‘I want you to be a magician. Not musician, a magician.’ What does a magician do? It does something that’s sleight of hand and you see it. It’s the same thing with music. You have to be a magician so that the listener says, ‘Oh, my God. This is amazing!’

Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement

Date of Birth

August 31, 1945

Itzhak Perlman was born in Tel Aviv in what was then British-ruled Palestine. His parents, Chaim and Shoshana, had immigrated from Poland before World War II. All three became Israeli citizens when the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948. From the very beginning, young Itzhak was fascinated by the classical music he heard on the radio, singing along and imitating the sounds of the instruments, particularly the violin. Given a miniature violin at age three, he taught himself to play melodies immediately, but was dissatisfied with the sound and clambered for a proper instrument.

1958: Television impresario Ed Sullivan selected 13-year-old Israeli Itzhak Perlman to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, introducing the young violinist to a widespread American audience. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

At age four, Itzhak was stricken with polio. He learned to walk with crutches and continued to play violin in a seated position. At age five, he began formal studies with the Russian-trained teacher Rivka Goldgart at Shulamit Conservatory. Practicing three hours a day, he progressed quickly, giving his first public recital at age ten. Perlman was already dreaming of a career as a soloist, but the traditions of classical music performance call for the solo violinist to stand, and many doubted that a seated violinist would be accepted on the concert stage. At 13, he sought opportunities to study abroad, and his eyes turned to the United States.

1965: Twenty-year-old Itzhak Perlman. Perlman made his Carnegie Hall debut in New York City with Wieniawski’s “Violin Concerto No. 1” in F sharp minor. In 1964, he won the Leventritt Competition, one of the most prestigious and demanding international musical competitions, which led to a burgeoning worldwide career. In 1965 and 1966, Perlman performed in 30 cities during his first major concert tour of America. (Sidney Field / Getty Images)

Opportunity appeared when the American newspaper columnist and television host Ed Sullivan planned to assemble an entire evening of Israeli artists for his popular Sunday night program, a beloved institution in the United States. The 13-year-old violinist passed a series of auditions, dazzling Sullivan’s scouts, and finally Sullivan himself. Itzhak Perlman arrived in New York with his mother in 1958. He made two appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and enrolled at the Juilliard School to study with the eminent teacher Ivan Galamian.

January 5, 1967: Concert violinist Isaac Stern kisses Toby Friedlander, a native New Yorker, Juilliard violinist, and bride of Israeli violinist Itzhak Perlman, shortly after the wedding ceremony in New York. Friedlander met Perlman in 1963 when he played “Tzigane” by Ravel during a summer camp concert. Friedlander thought, ”I cannot live without that sound,” and she ran backstage to blurt to Perlman, ”I want to marry you!” (Photo Credit: AP Images)

Speaking little English, and living with his mother in cramped hotel rooms, young Itzhak found his first months in the new country to be difficult. He missed his father and his schoolmates, but he discovered a supportive influence in Galamian’s assistant, Dorothy DeLay. DeLay was struck by the boy’s precocious technique and encouraged him to develop his individuality as an artist. Rather than dictating details of technique and interpretation as Goldgart had done, DeLay urged the young violinist to listen to himself critically and find his own way to express the feelings a given piece evoked in him.

Chaim Perlman eventually joined his wife and son in New York, and the Perlman family created a stable home in the new country. Given Itzhak’s demanding schedule of practice and music study, his parents chose to school him at home while his artistry grew impressively under DeLay and Galamian’s guidance at Juilliard. At a summer music camp, Itzhak met a fellow violin student, Toby Friedlander. In later years, they would recall that, after hearing him play for the first time, she asked him to marry her. Marriage would have to wait, but the two teenagers had formed a bond that would last for many decades to come.

In 1963, Itzhak Perlman made his debut at Carnegie Hall and word spread quickly that a new musical phenomenon had arrived on the scene — a violinist with fire and passion in the grand tradition, like Perlman’s hero, Jascha Heifetz. The following year, Perlman won the Leventritt Competition, the nation’s most prestigious contest for young pianists and violinists. His formal studies complete, the 19-year-old wonder embarked on an extensive schedule of recording and performance, beginning with two return appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, alongside popular entertainers and musicians such as The Rolling Stones. Perlman began his recording career with a series of critically acclaimed LPs, including his 1967 recording with the Boston Symphony of violin concertos by Prokofiev and Sibelius. That same year, Itzhak Perlman and Toby Friedlander were married.

2001: Itzhak Perlman conducts the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra during a rehearsal at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, Israel. He has performed as conductor with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, National Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Montreal, and Toronto, as well as at the Ravinia and OK Mozart Festivals. He was the music advisor of the St. Louis Symphony from 2002 to 2004, where he made regular conducting appearances, and he was the principal guest conductor of the Detroit Symphony from 2001 to 2005. Internationally, Mr. Perlman has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, and the Israel Philharmonic. (Dan Porges/Getty)

Over the following decades, Itzhak Perlman recorded and performed with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. His recordings of the great violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky are essential to any library or collection of classical music recordings. In addition to extraordinary sales for a classical artist, Perlman’s recordings have won recognition from the recording industry, with 15 Grammy Awards, beginning with a 1977 Grammy for his performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. He won multiple Grammy Awards each year, in 1978, 1980, 1981, 1987 and 1990 — three in 1980 alone for recordings of chamber music and the violin concertos of Brahms and Stravinsky.

2003 Kennedy Center Honorees: James Brown, Loretta Lynn, Carol Burnett, Mike Nichols and Itzhak Perlman at a U.S. State Department dinner hosted by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The honorees will be celebrated the following night at an all-star gala performance in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House. (Scott Suchman/WireImage)

Itzhak Perlman has brought his passion for music to even larger audience through television, from his earliest appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show to guest appearances on everything from Sesame Street to The Tonight Show, as well as hosting numerous specials of his own. In 1986, Perlman participated in the New York Philharmonic’s tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, broadcast live on network television. The same year, Itzhak Perlman was awarded the Medal of Liberty by President Ronald Reagan.

Awards Council member and Nobel Prize recipient Elie Wiesel presents the Academy of Achievement’s Gold Medal to Itzhak Perlman during the 2005 International Achievement Summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.

As a boy in Tel Aviv, Perlman had dreamed of playing with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO). Playing with the orchestra, at last, was one of the gratifying experiences of his early career. In 1987, he joined the orchestra for its historic concerts in Warsaw and Budapest, the orchestra’s first visit to the Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc. Traveling and performing conditions in the East were less luxurious than those of North America and Western Europe, but the audiences welcomed Perlman and the IPO with rapturous enthusiasm. The musicians were greeted even more warmly when they played in Russia itself in the spring of 1990. Perlman and the IPO’s performances in Moscow and Leningrad were documented in an Emmy Award-winning television special. Perlman also appeared in Russia that year for the 150th anniversary celebration of the birth of Tchaikovsky. Perlman and the IPO continued to blaze new trails with a tour of China and India in 1994.

In March 2006, a worldwide audience in the hundreds of millions watched Itzhak Perlman perform live on the 78th Annual Academy Awards telecast, as he performed a medley from the five film scores nominated in the category of Best Original Score. One of Perlman’s proudest achievements is his collaboration with film score composer John Williams in Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film Schindler’s List, in which he performed the violin solos. He can also be heard as the violin soloist on the soundtrack of Zhang Yimou’s film Hero (music by Tan Dun) and Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha (music by John Williams). (Photo by M. Caulfield/WireImage/Getty Images)

In 1995, he won his 15th Grammy for The American Album, featuring works by American composers Samuel Barber, Lukas Foss, and Leonard Bernstein. In that year, he also released In the Fiddler’s House, a recording of klezmer, the traditional popular music of the Jews of Eastern Europe. In his travels, he had made contact with practitioners of the style in its historic homeland. The 1995 television special In the Fiddler’s House, filmed in Poland, featured Perlman performing with leading klezmer bands and brought him a third Emmy Award. He had won another the previous year for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Cultural Programming. In addition to klezmer, Perlman enjoyed explorations of jazz, recording jazz standards with pianist Oscar Peterson, and a series of new jazz-inflected compositions with the composer, conductor and pianist Andre Previn. Itzhak Perlman has also been heard in a number of motion pictures, most memorably playing the solo violin part in John Williams’s Oscar-winning score for the Steven Spielberg film Schindler’s List.

2007: Itzhak Perlman at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. Perlman emigrated to the United States in 1958 and under scholarship went on to study at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music with violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay. Itzhak Perlman currently holds the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Chair at the Juilliard School. He was awarded an honorary doctorate and a centennial medal on the occasion of Juilliard’s 100th commencement ceremony in May 2005 at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. (Eamonn McCabe/Redferns)

In 1995, Toby Friedlander Perlman founded the Perlman Music Program as a summer camp on Long Island for exceptional young string musicians between the ages of 11 and 18. It has since evolved into a yearlong program, with Itzhak Perlman as an enthusiastic participant, coaching the students before public performances. By requiring the students to practice together, the Perlman Program enables young musicians to develop a support network of friends and colleagues. Perlman’s work with students has been documented in the television special Fiddling for the Future. The program captured a fourth Emmy Award for Perlman.

At the turn of the 21st century, Perlman — now widely recognized as the world’s preeminent classical violinist — initiated a second career as a conductor. He has since appeared as a guest conductor with most of the leading American orchestras — including the New York Philharmonic and the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles — and with many of the major European ones, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as the Israel Philharmonic.

May 7, 2007: Violinist Itzhak Perlman performs for President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Lynne Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney, former First Lady Nancy Reagan, and invited guests in the East Room after a State Dinner in honor of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at the White House in Washington, D.C. The British monarch and the president solemnly toasted the tight bonds between their countries, in the grandest White House dinner of Bush’s administration. (Saul Loeb)

Perlman has been honored repeatedly by his adopted country. President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts in 2000. In 2003, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. That same year, he succeeded his former teacher, Dorothy DeLay, as Starling Foundation Chair in Violin Studies at Juilliard. In 2004, the record label EMI released The Perlman Edition, a limited edition, 15-CD box set of his greatest recordings for the label. A 2004 television special, Perlman in Shanghai, recorded his visit to China with the Perlman Music Program. This visit culminated in a concert where Perlman led 1,000 young violinists in a live performance broadcast all over China.

2015: President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Itzhak Perlman during an East Room ceremony at the White House in Washington, D.C. Perlman is one of 17 recipients of the Medal of Freedom, which honors “individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” The White House noted in its press release, “through his advocacy and his example,” Perlman — who has walked with crutches since contracting polio at age four — “has been an important voice on behalf of persons with disabilities.” (Alex Wong)

Nearly half a century after his arrival in the United States, Itzhak Perlman had become a national institution in his own right and familiar presence at important state occasions. In 2007, he performed at the White House for a State Dinner in honor of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. The recording industry recognized his entire career with the Grammy for Lifetime Achievement in 2008. The following year, he performed at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. In 2015, President Obama presented Itzhak Perlman with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The following year, Perlman was honored by the country of his birth with the Genesis Prize of Israel. In 2017, he was the subject of a feature-length documentary film, Itzhak.

2017: Israeli American violinist and conductor Itzhak Perlman and a Perlman Music Program student perform during the premiere of the documentary film Itzhak, a portrait of Itzhak Perlman’s life, at the Guild Hall during the Hamptons International Film Festival in East Hampton, New York. (Photo Credit: Monica Schipper/Getty Images)

Today, Itzhak Perlman continues to perform, record and teach. Throughout his career, he has made his way to the world’s great concert stages while coping with travel arrangements and performance venues that are barely accessible to a person on crutches or in a wheelchair. By his example and his advocacy, he has worked to achieve full accessibility for the disabled to all public places. Itzhak and Toby Perlman live in New York City, where they have raised four children.

The world’s greatest living violinist, Itzhak Perlman, has become the most recognized classical musician in the world. As a global ambassador of music, he has won the hearts of audiences in America, Europe, and Asia, which are as moved by his character, his warmth, and his passion for music as they are dazzled by the virtuosity of his playing and the depth and insight of his interpretation.

Born in Israel, where he received his initial musical training, he came to America at age 13 to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. Since then, he has appeared with every major orchestra and in recitals around the world. His recordings regularly appear on the best-seller charts and have garnered 15 Grammy Awards.

Through his frequent appearances on television, Mr. Perlman has entertained an audience in the millions. He has been honored with four Emmy Awards for programs showcasing his educational efforts with the Perlman Music Program and his music-making visits to Russia, Poland, and China. During the past ten years, Mr. Perlman has embarked on a second career as a conductor, leading the world’s greatest orchestras. Stricken with polio as a child, his personal courage in overcoming his disability has inspired millions. Wherever he goes, he has employed his influence and his renown to achieve equal access for the disabled.

Watch full interview

Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement

Itzhak Perlman: I started the violin when I was four. I liked the sound of it, so that’s why I chose it. That’s why I said to my parents, “I want to play this instrument.” And then you start to get reaction from people: “Is he talented? Does he have a gift?” And so on and so forth. I was always into sound. I had a good concept of sound on the violin. I heard it in my head. So people always say, “Oh, he has a very nice sound.” And one thing leads to another, and you develop, you study. I studied with one teacher, actually, in Israel. I studied with a teacher who had a Russian background. I studied with her. She’s the only one that I studied with. We studied at the age of five, and she taught me until I was 13, and that’s when I came to the States. So one thing leads to another and then says, “Well, you know, he’s pretty talented.” And so on. So it’s not like I woke up one morning and said, “That’s what I want to do,” you know. It’s a gradual thing.

How did The Ed Sullivan Show change your life? Were you already headed for a career as a concert artist?

Itzhak Perlman: I was talented and played the violin, but people didn’t really take it very seriously because of my polio — because I had polio when I was four. And so I was sitting down, and I was playing, and people always said, “Well, you know, I don’t know if you’re going to have a career…” blah, blah, blah. They didn’t take it seriously. And so for me to go to the United States — I would say that in every little country, after a while, you go abroad to complete your studies. We have this Hebrew word that says le-hishtalmut, which means “to complete; completion.” And I wasn’t having any success.

People around me, where I was studying, would say, “Oh, well, you know…“ So he was my ticket to the United States, Ed Sullivan.

Living in Israel, how did you come to be on this American television program — two, three — how many times?

Itzhak Perlman: I was on The Ed Sullivan Show twice, sort of — three times when I was 13 and three times when I was 18. I’ll just give you a very quick history about this. Ed Sullivan, in 1958, came to Israel because he wanted to have a show made only of Israeli artists — Israeli acts — because with Ed Sullivan, you know, Ed Sullivan was a true variety program. That’s why I said “acts,” because it’s, like, anything went. So he wanted to do it just from Israeli artists. So there were national auditions. Everybody would audition, you know: “We want to be on The Ed Sullivan Show.” People would audition anybody that did anything, whether they were musicians or dancers or singers or comedians, whatever it is. Then it was narrowed down to a few, and then he came himself to Israel for the final choosing, so I was one of the people that were chosen to be on the show.

Were you scared as a 13-year-old, traveling so far from home and being on this big TV show?

Itzhak Perlman: I was looking forward to coming to the States. I took some English in school, the first time. And my English — there was no English! And there was an English book, I remember, and there was a picture of the Empire State Building in the textbook, and I said, “One of these days I’m going to be there.” So it was my dream to go to the States, so I was very, very — I loved the idea to have a chance to go to the States.

1958, New York City: Itzhak Perlman appearing on TheEd Sullivan Show. Born in Israel in 1945, Itzhak Perlman completed his initial training at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. He came to New York and soon was propelled into the international arena with an appearance on TheEd Sullivan Show in 1958. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty)

You studied here at Juilliard, where we’re doing this interview, with Dorothy DeLay, and she wrote this about you when you were a very young teenager: “I had never seen such fingers on a 13-year-old. The development of skill was so far beyond that of any other child, it was just startling. He had large hands, a fluent arm, exceptional coordination, and superb timing. I could not believe my ears.”

Itzhak Perlman: I guess she liked it!

How helpful were Dorothy DeLay and your other teachers?

Itzhak Perlman: It’s very funny because this is the room that she taught in, where we are right now. That’s her studio. Well, let me give you the very, very short history of the way I studied. My first teacher, as I mentioned before, was a lady. Her name was Rivka Goldgart. She was Russian background, and she was basically a taskmaster. She was very good. She knew certain things, but it was one of those things where you’d better practice or else. It was one of those things, and: “If you don’t sound good, I’ll tell you what to do, and you do it.” Then I came to the States, and I studied with Dorothy DeLay and with Ivan Galamian. So at that time, actually, it was very interesting. I heard about Galamian when I was still in Israel, and then when the Ed Sullivan situation arose, that was my way of going to Juilliard and studying with Galamian because that was the guy. But at that time, Dorothy DeLay was his assistant. So she came when, I remember, I was in the hotel downtown and the first hotel was very depressing. It was one of those hotels where you open the door and you could touch the window. That’s how big the room was!

I was not very happy because I was missing my father because I came here only with my mother, and then my father joined us later. And I was missing my friends — I had friends in school and stuff. So I was alone, and I didn’t speak the language, so I was not in a great mood. Ms. DeLay came in, and she said something in English, and I couldn’t understand what she was talking about, and I just played. And then we started. So she was the first one to teach me, and then Galamian joined a few months later. Her system was different than anything that I had experienced before. The way that she would teach would be you would play something and she would ask you what you thought about it. She would ask you what I think can be done to maybe improve it or what I think. In other words, she — and I would always hate it because I wasn’t used to it. I was used to people telling me what to do, and I would try and do it. She didn’t tell me what to do. She asked me what should I do, and I always said to her, “Just tell me.” My favorite example is when something was out of tune, she would say, “Sugarplum…“ She would always call you “Sugarplum.” She was from Kansas, you know. She said, “Sugarplum, what is your concept of G sharp?” That was a code word that it was a little out of tune, and I would always say, “Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.” She wouldn’t do that. She would do things to make you think.

How was that helpful to your music?

Itzhak Perlman: Right now it’s very funny because, after hating it so much, that’s the way I teach.

Why?

Itzhak Perlman: Because it works better with the student. The student, just following orders, in some ways is not as imaginative. In other words, the concept does not require so much imagination. It does not require a lot of thought. It just requires following orders. That does not make it your own. If you actually figure out what the problems are — whether it’s phrasing, whether it’s intonation, whether it’s timing, whatever it is — if you can figure it out yourself, then you own it.

Is it really true that you were only three years old and you could recite arias after hearing them on the radio?

Itzhak Perlman: I imitated what I heard. Yeah, I imitated what I heard. The thing is that — one of the things that I feel that I’m very lucky — two things, actually, maybe a few more. First of all, I’m lucky that I make a living at something that I love, which actually should be the goal of everybody. If you can make a living with something that you really adore, what better things can happen if you can do that? That’s one thing. The other thing is that I’m actually able to cry when I hear certain kinds of music, and I think that’s amazing that I’m affected by that, you know. And it’s something — it’s me, you know. So if I hear something on the radio, and I say, “Oh, my God!”

March 9, 2015: Virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman surprises 19,000 fans and performs at Billy Joel’s sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden, New York City. Perlman joined Joel for two songs, “The Downeaster ‘Alexa,’” a song the duo recorded together on Joel’s Storm Front album released in 1989, and “And So It Goes.” (Myrna Suarez/Getty)

Could you tell us a piece of music that might make you cry?

Itzhak Perlman: A recording that I hate! A recording that I think is me and I hate it — oh, I’ll cry! “Did I record this?” Sometimes I’ll listen on the radio, and I hear a violinist playing, and I say, “Oh, my God, I hope it’s not me because if it’s me, I wouldn’t do it like that today.” Or you can say, “It better be me because it’s too good!” So it’s always something. What makes me cry?

I remember my first experience, I suppose, that made me cry is chamber music by Brahms. The opening of Mozart’s Requiem — that is just like, forget about it! And it’s not a tear-jerker. It’s just — it moves you. It moves you in a certain way. And then people ask, “Why?” And I can’t understand. I think that if you want to really be specific, and you want to be really accurate as to what is scientific about it, it’s probably a thing about harmonies, that the harmonies affect you in a certain way. That’s why I believe that not everybody cries in the same spot. It’s a harmonic reaction, so that’s very scientific. It’s not like you say, “Oh, well, just that music moves you.” No. When you listen, for example, to Puccini, La Bohème, that’s kind of automatic. They almost call it musical pornography because it makes you, “Oh, my God!” But what is that, really? It’s basically, really, it’s the way the composer put the harmonies together, and I think that has an effect.

Is there a piece of music that you’ve played more than any other?

Itzhak Perlman: Probably, but I wouldn’t know. I mean I would probably say any of the big violin concertos and, you know — and Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and so on. Those are the ones that people want all the time, so I would say that.

Can you still get emotionally involved in these pieces after thousands of times?

Itzhak Perlman: That’s a very good question. That’s one of the great challenges for a performing musician. That’s what I talk about to my students.

You know, it’s very easy to play a piece for the first time because you’re excited. You’re a little nervous. You get inspired. Then the second time comes, and you feel a little better about it because you know that you can do it. And then the third time, it may be, “Well, how do I play that piece? Well, I play that piece like yesterday.” And then the fourth time, who knows? And then, after a while, the danger is to play the piece “the way it goes,” and that’s where the mistake is. I mean there’s no such thing as “the way it goes.” You don’t play a piece “the way it goes.” You play a piece the way it is, and “the way it goes” is a danger because then, as a result, what happens is you imitate what you do, and it loses the spontaneity.

I basically always, always listen to the music rather than just saying, “Well, you know, I play this phrase this way, and that’s the way I play it.” That’s not necessarily the case, you know. I may play the phrase slightly differently, and again, it’s not a question of “Today I’m playing loud; tomorrow I’m playing soft.” It’s not like that. It’s very subtle, and I always call it — it’s our kind of improvisation. Because when people play jazz, they improvise, but when they improvise, they really improvise. They play different notes. They play different harmonies, and they do certain things, and if you hear a piece one time, you hear the same piece a second time, it’s really different. With classical musicians, the improvisation is very subtle. You hear it the first time, it’s like this. You hear it the second time, it has maybe a freshness, and that’s a little bit of an improvisation, but it’s very subtle. It’s about timing. It’s about phrasing. It’s about color, but it’s not about, necessarily — it’s not about notes. The notes are the same. So in many ways, to improvise that way in classical music is very difficult.

Itzhak Perlman: Color has to do with a lot of things. Again, people with talent know how to do color. Now if you want me to talk to you about the technical aspect of color, it has to do with bow pressure. It has to do with bow speed. It has to do with the amount of vibrato that you use in the left hand. It has to do with: “Do you use more vibrato? Do you use less vibrato? What’s the combination?” But these are very scientific kinds of things. Color kind of is another thing. Color can — when people are inspired, they use color and, of course, color is a talent. Can you teach that? I don’t think so. You can say, “Well, he should play softer. He should play more…” But when it comes to naturally doing something, that’s a talent. I always mention to my students — I always say, “I don’t want to know what you’re doing.” In other words, the minute I know what you’re doing, then it’s not spontaneous. Like if I said, “Oh, here they’re going to do — they’re going to slow down here. They’re going to play softer here. They’re going to play…“ It becomes an affect. I want you to be a magician. Not a musician, a magician. What does a magician do? It does something that’s sleight of hand and you see it. It’s the same thing with music. You have to be a magician so that when the listener listens, the listener says, “Oh, my God. This is so amazing,” rather than saying, “Well, I like the way he did this, and I like the way he did…” That’s no longer spontaneous. I just want to relax. Of course, as a teacher, if somebody asks me, “What made it so good?” I can kind of go into it under a magnifying glass and say, “Well, it was this way, it was that way.” But as a listener, I just want to say, “Oh, that was so fresh. That was so nice. I just loved it.” I don’t want to ask any questions. And that’s a talent.

Can you tell us what it’s like to be on the stage at Carnegie Hall or some other great concert venue? What does it feel like when you move the audience?

Itzhak Perlman: All I do is my job. My job is to tell the audience what is my concept of the piece that I’m playing. Listen to what I’m playing, and this is the way I feel about that piece. And that, hopefully, communicates to the audience. It’s my job. So my job is not to play something and to say, “Well, you can listen in if you want. I’m doing my own thing.” I’m doing this, and I’m presenting this for the audience. So whenever I play a piece, this is my representation of the piece. And I hope that the audience understands the way I feel about it. That’s the way I do it. And that has nothing to do with whether it’s Carnegie Hall or whether it’s in a small place. Any place, whenever I play — whether it’s in a big place or a small place or a small town, big town, et cetera, et cetera — I have to communicate with the audience.

You have a lot of performances and a lot of music ahead of you, but when you come to the end of your career, what do you hope your contribution to music will have been?

Itzhak Perlman: God. Well, I hope that with recordings, I hope that people can sort of listen and enjoy it. Personally — I always say that, but I’ll repeat it — I hope I never get bored with music. Right now, because of my teaching and my playing and my conducting, I have a lot of stuff that still is fresh for me and new to me, and one thing helps the other. So I’m not thinking about what my effect would be. I don’t think about it. I’m being very selfish. I think about, “How am I going to continue to have a good time in music and to be still inspired by music?” As long as I can do that, then my goal is accomplished.

Is it really true that after your wife-to-be heard you play for the first time, she walked up to you, and said…

Itzhak Perlman: I was flabbergasted. I was 17! But that’s how we met. It’s a true story.

Can you remember a specific performance — a debut or a special concert — that was particularly meaningful to you?

Itzhak Perlman: One of my dreams was to play with the Israel Philharmonic because growing up in Israel, the dream is — if you are a musician — is to play with the Israel Philharmonic. So I would say that probably was very memorable to me. And it was very funny because it’s a good story. They introduced — they took out a copy of a letter that I wrote when I was 11 years old, and I wanted to play with the Israel Philharmonic. And I wrote a letter to the Philharmonic, saying, “I hereby request an audition to play with the orchestra.” I wrote it all myself in pen and so on — “Sincerely yours” — and they never answered. And then they showed it to me because they kept it. So when I played with them, then that was like a dream come true for me as a youngster.

What was it about the violin that first attracted you?

Itzhak Perlman: I liked the sound of the violin. When you hear people playing different instruments and you ask them, “What was it about this instrument that you like?” — they will always say that “it appeals to me.” My favorite example is in our program, the Perlman Music Program. It’s a program for talented string players, and one of our teachers is a wonderful bass player. And one time I asked her, I said, “Did you start on the bass, or did you just play the cello, and then you decided to…“ She said, “No, I always wanted to play the bass.” So what is it about the bass? Well, it’s about somebody’s reacting to a low sound. I reacted to a high sound. My daughter always wanted to play the flute. What is there about it? I don’t know. It’s something that appeals to you, you know. It’s the same thing about, like, you go to a restaurant and you look at something and say, “I don’t like this. I hate that. I like this. “ What is it? Well, we are all different, so that’s the same about an instrument.

How did you get your first violin?

Itzhak Perlman: My first violin was almost a toy-sized violin, which didn’t sound very well, and I just said, “That’s not what I want.” Because what I heard in my ear was — you know, I heard Jascha Heifetz on the radio. That was the sound that I wanted to hear. So I was not very impressed by that, and then there was another one. None of it was very — I was not impressed by it. I always played whatever was available, so it was not a big deal.

What role would you say your parents played in your success?

Itzhak Perlman: I would say they were quietly supportive. They believed in me. That’s the thing. It’s very easy — when you have a child with an illness like polio, he can’t walk and so on and so forth — it’s very easy to be, shall we say, quietly about, “Oh, he’s playing music. That’s very nice.” But no, they didn’t do that. They said, “You’ve got a…“ They took my music seriously. They took me seriously, and that’s the important thing because if they didn’t take me seriously then — look, when you’re a kid, practicing is not something that comes naturally to you. If you get a kid that — if you tell me a kid that’s involved, that’s really incredibly disciplined with practicing, I would say that kid is very unusual!

You’ve been called — since you were three, I think — a child prodigy, this boy with a gift. What does that mean, being called a child prodigy?

Itzhak Perlman: “Child prodigy” is often used wrongly, I think. It’s used commonly. If you want to know what a child prodigy is, Mozart was a child prodigy. That’s a prodigy, to be able to compose at such an early age. If somebody was gifted, I suppose I would call them gifted, talented. So you can say very talented, extremely talented, but prodigy is — I don’t know. It’s used too often, and it’s the same thing as genius. “Oh, this guy is a genius!” Mozart was a genius. Einstein was a genius!

How would you describe yourself?

Itzhak Perlman: I would describe myself as somebody very talented, and if you talk to my wife, she would absolutely disagree! She would say that I was much more than that, but I don’t think so. I had a gift. I had a gift, but when I was 13 and I was on The Ed Sullivan Show, I still feel that when you heard me play, at the age of 13, you thought that it was somebody who was 13, not somebody who was 25. And sometimes you hear kids at the age of 13, and they’re just, like, accomplished, totally ready for Carnegie Hall. But then comes the big challenge. What happens in the next five years? Next six years? Will you survive your gift? That’s important.

After TheEd Sullivan Show, what did you do to survive your gift?

Itzhak Perlman: I just went to Juilliard. One of the things that I did not do is I did not go to school. I was home-schooled because we figured that if I were to go to school, I would not have time to practice, so I did that. And again, support, parental support.

Did you practice three hours every day?

Itzhak Perlman: Yeah.

Seven days a week.

Itzhak Perlman: Yeah.

Never stopped?

Itzhak Perlman: On holidays, thank God! Pun intended.

They say about you that it’s not just amazing talent, it’s your imagination that makes you the best in the world. How do you spur imagination, creativity?

Itzhak Perlman: How do you teach it? Certain things you cannot teach, and certain things you can. Now Ms. DeLay was very interesting. She believed that you could teach anything, and we would always have a fight about it. We would say, “No, Ms. DeLay, no. You can teach this. You can teach this. You can teach that, but you cannot teach a certain gift for when somebody plays and it moves you.” You cannot teach that. That’s something that the player, obviously, does not really know what he or she does to make that happen.

It’s very funny. The other day — it was like a week ago — somebody sent me an email. This guy plays the piano. He’s an amateur pianist, but he’s very serious, and he said, “How do you make an audience cry?” He says, “I want to know how you produce tears in the listener when you play because I don’t know how to do it, and I want to know what the deal is.” And I said to him, “I don’t know what it is.” I said, “All you have to do is just think about the music and about how you feel about the music, and the rest is up to the audience if that makes them cry.“

You know, people can cry in concerts for various reasons. They can cry if what you play brings some sad memory. You can do that. You can cry by a particular effect of harmonies that just makes you cry. Sometimes when I teach, and I have studio classes with our kids, one of the things that we talk about is the “goosebump moment” in music. What moment in music gives you the goosebumps? I’m always curious about whether the same moment would give goosebumps to all the people, or would each person have a different moment in music that gives them the goosebumps? I think that that’s the case. Everybody reacts differently, so that’s one of those things I don’t think you can teach.

Why do you think you were born with this gift?

Itzhak Perlman: I have no idea. We have a lot of applicants for our program — this program my wife started 23 years ago for very talented string players. So they send us videos, and you have so many different experiences listening. You see somebody play, and sometimes they play perfectly, and nothing happens here, and nothing happens here. And then you see somebody play, and maybe it’s not as perfect, but you say, “Oh, that person really has got it.” Is it a better teacher? No. It’s something that you are born with. Now how do you treat that? We don’t know, but it’s something that you have, and that’s what I said to Ms. DeLay. You cannot teach that.

Do you ever see people who have the gift and throw it away?

Itzhak Perlman: Oh, yes. Sometimes. Sometimes it has to do with age. You see somebody who is nine, ten, eleven, twelve years old, thirteen years old, and it’s absolutely incredible, and five years later it’s gone.

Why?

Itzhak Perlman: I don’t know. It’s like the innocence is gone — the loss of innocence. Sometimes people play, and they don’t know what they do. They just come and play, and one morning they wake up, and they say, “You know, what I’m doing is really, really tough,” and then they start thinking about it. I’m telling you, if you look at YouTube on the Internet, you see so many incredibly talented and gifted players. Eight years old, nine years old, ten years, and you say, “Oh, my God.” This does not necessarily mean that they’re going to grow up and have a career. Doesn’t mean that at all. Sometimes, as a matter of fact, when we hear somebody who is incredibly talented at the age of 11 or 12 or 13, we always say, “We have to cross our fingers,” because what would happen to these people when they turn 18 or 19? There are so many opportunities for everything to go wrong.

What increases the chances of it going right?

Itzhak Perlman: I don’t really know. One of the things — sometimes when people are really talented, all of a sudden it’s like, career, career, career. And we always think that the more natural child would have the better chance for things to go right, but let’s face it, to be a musician is not normal. It’s abnormal, you know. Anything that you do as a child that is special, whether it’s ice skating, playing tennis, playing the violin, playing the cello, playing the piano — which requires practicing — what’s natural about that? That you have to spend — when I was growing up, I spent three hours a day practicing. Three hours a day is not even a lot. Some kids, I will say to them, “Don’t practice, you know — five hours is it.” But can you imagine that you have to go to school and practice and do your homework? It’s very serious, and so sometimes, you have to have a real something inside of you that really wants to do it.

Has the style of playing the violin changed over your lifetime?

Itzhak Perlman: The style of playing the violin has changed a lot. It’s a different style. It’s not, as we always say, playing the violin in the “grand tradition.” So what is the grand tradition? I can give you examples of the grand tradition. I like to play in the grand tradition. Heifetz was in the grand tradition. Kreisler was just the beginning. Oistrakh, Stern, and these were all sort of grand, traditional sort of basic sound of the instrument — big, lush-sounding instrument; certain slides; certain way of phrasing, and so on; big, big playing. Right now there’s a lot of stuff. Some people still play in the grand tradition, but a lot of them play sometimes — you have this business with the early music playing where they don’t vibrate. That comes into the situation. Shifting is a bit less than it used to be, and so on. It’s very interesting because I feel that during our summer program, the Perlman Music Program, we always have a couple of nights where I play for the students. It’s like studying history. I play them old violinists. I play them violinists that used to play 40 years ago, 50 years ago. It’s changed. It’s like jazz. And a lot of the stuff, if you ask me why has it changed, I believe that it has changed because every time something gets evolved, and then people listen — there’s so much more chance of listening today. It’s very easy, you know. Just put on YouTube and you can listen to anything you want, and it depends who is affected by what. I always like to tell my kids, “Don’t listen only to who is playing today these days. You’ve got to listen to who played 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago.” It’s part of history because, otherwise, you play like you have blinders. You don’t see anything. You have to have a history of listening.

When I was going to Juilliard, we listened to everything. We listened to Kreisler; we listened to Oistrakh. Of course, everybody listened to Heifetz. He was the guy that everybody listened to. Today, sometimes they do, too. Milstein, Elman, Stern, and so on, and it’s a part of learning. But jazz is the same thing. How did jazz develop? When you listen to Art Tatum, that’s a different kind of piano playing than if you listen to somebody who’s playing today. It’s different harmonies, but they were all affected by what happened before. It’s all historical.

Do you think having polio affected your career?

Itzhak Perlman: Having polio did not affect my career. As to getting the career, that was a little more difficult. That was a little more difficult because I constantly had to prove to people that they should just not look at the fact that I’m sitting and just listen to me. So that was it. It could have had an effect, a negative effect, but my parents were very much believers in me.

How did they tell you that?

Itzhak Perlman: They didn’t. They were very strict, especially my mother. “You’ve got to practice.” That was basically the whole thing of my childhood: “You’ve got to practice.” That’s what we always would fight about. We wouldn’t fight about anything else. I was pretty good in school, but “You’ve got to practice.” And that’s what I tell everybody. Practicing is really important. You can have the gift. Jascha Heifetz used to say, “To play the violin is ten percent talent and 90 percent sweat!” You have to really practice.

After decades of concerts, you’ve played for Queen Elizabeth; you’ve played at the inauguration of Barack Obama. Is there any concert that stands out in your mind?

Itzhak Perlman: The Barack Obama was, for me, an incredible experience simply because it was so cold! It was so cold. It was just incredible, but it was such a great honor, and being a part of history is something special. I’ve played many, many places. I suppose that something that stands out is when you play something that is like a part of history. I played in Russia, when it was the Soviet Union, with the Israel Philharmonic. That, for me, stands out because it was something that didn’t occur before. It had political ramifications, and so on, so that stands out, playing in the Eastern Bloc countries. Sometimes that stands out. I know that after this interview, I’ll think of so many things that I didn’t mention about what stands out as to where I played.

Is it harder to play the violin when your fingers are cold?

Itzhak Perlman: Oh, forget about it! It’s hard when it’s hot and it’s hard when it’s cold. I’ve had many, many experiences where I had to play where they had to actually put heaters on the stage because it was that cold. And then, of course, there’s a thing where you have 100-degree humidity and everything slips. You sweat with your hands, and so on, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You don’t wear a bow tie and tails onstage anymore. You wear a Chinese sort of tunic. Where does that come from?

Itzhak Perlman: Well, I’ll tell you. Too many times, I have said, “Oh, I forgot my cufflinks. Oh, I forgot my white tie. I forgot my cummerbund.” This way, it looks neat. I can just put on a t-shirt, and then I put a nice shirt on top of the thing, and it hides everything. It looks neat. I don’t need to worry about anything, and it’s great.

When did you start wearing that?

Itzhak Perlman: I had a tour of the Far East, and then I went to China. And in Shanghai, I went to a store, and I saw this thing, and I said, “Oh, that looks really nice. I’ll put it on.” And I don’t know whether Toby, my wife, said, “You should try and play in it.” I tried, and I said, “Oh, my God, that’s so comfortable.” There it was!

We’ve read that to be a concert violinist, you need the nerves of a bullfighter.

Itzhak Perlman: Yeah, Heifetz said that.

What does that mean?

Itzhak Perlman: You go in front of an audience, and you want to make sure that you don’t screw up!

Do you ever get stage fright?

Itzhak Perlman: Of course, of course. Yes. Stage fright is part of the deal.

What was the worst performance?

Itzhak Perlman: Well, I’ve had a couple of interesting memory slips that forced me to actually compose as I was looking to find myself back into the thing. So that was, shall we say, a “nice experience,” in quotes, and that was really something. I remember, I was playing, and all of a sudden, I was doing my playing, and I heard the conductor clearing his throat in the middle of the performance. And I said to myself, “Can’t he clear his throat quietly?” — because he was going ahem, ahem. I said, “What is he doing?” So I kind of look up, and he was going like that, you know. Like, with a kind of question mark, and then I realized that I actually skipped an entire movement. I started at the beginning, and I was already at the end, and so I immediately went into defense mode! I just kind of went like that, “Don’t worry about it,” and that’s when I started to compose a couple of lines to get back to the cadence. So that was it, but you never forget these things.

And you don’t panic? What do you do?

Itzhak Perlman: No, you just say, “Well, okay, let’s see what I’m going to do.” I just figured it out!

Can you tell when an audience loves what you’re doing?

Itzhak Perlman: Yes. All audiences like what you do. It’s just the question of how they react, let’s put it that way. I like certain reactions more than others. Sometimes an audience is very polite and claps nicely, and that’s very nice. But then sometimes you have an audience where they’re very noisy when they like something, and they shout bravo and stuff like that. So it’s kind of nicer.

But for me, the more important thing is when you play in a concert hall that has really good acoustics and you can play the hall. There are certain halls in the States, for example, that are like that. For example, Symphony Hall in Boston is so easy to play the hall because it has a lot of reverb that comes to you, and then you can control it.

You know what it’s like? I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Frank Sinatra live or a video of Frank Sinatra. He knew how to work a mic. He would go with the mic closer or farther, and so on, and he had good mic savvy. So it’s a little bit similar to that when you have a hall that gives you stuff, and then you can sort of get the music and control the colors, and so on, because you have that hall. If you have a hall, for example, with dry acoustics, it’s more difficult.

What hall gives you the most stuff?

Itzhak Perlman: Well, as I said, Symphony Hall in Boston. Severance Hall in Cleveland is wonderful. In some ways, Carnegie is not too bad. I actually enjoy playing at David Geffen Hall. Disney Hall is very nice, and, as I said, it makes it a little easier to do what you want to do.

You’re the reigning virtuoso violinist in the world right now. Do you still strive for more?

Itzhak Perlman: I don’t know what “more” means. I do my job. If I can enjoy music and give it to the audience, that’s what I do. Striving for more what? After all these years, if I’m not bored by the Beethoven violin concerto, I’m in good shape.

You’re still on the concert tour.

Itzhak Perlman: I’m only going to go until I feel that I’m not playing as well — and if I have something to offer, why not? I must say that traveling is horrible, and sometimes I feel I don’t want to do anything because of the traveling because it’s so impossible. The difficulty, all of the challenges – hotels and rooms which are not accessible, or they are accessible and how are they accessible; airports, and so on. Horrible. It’s horrible for a lot of people, but for me, especially, it’s even more horrible. Maybe when I reach a point where I say I can’t take that anymore, I would say, “Well, you know what I’ll do? Maybe I’ll just travel by car. If I can get to a place by car or by train — even train — then I’ll do it.” But otherwise, it’s just impossible. It’s really a very, very great problem for me.

You have world recognition. You have enough money. Why do you keep going?

Itzhak Perlman: Well, that’s what I do. People talk about retiring, you know. One of the most dangerous things to do is retire. Sometimes people ask me to write letters to people who are retiring, saying, “So-and-so is retiring. Can you write something nice to congratulate him?” Congratulate him for what? — To retire? You don’t need congratulations to retire. What it says is, “I hope you do something after you retire,” because if you retire, what’s life for? How much can you sit at the beach or have sun or go fishing and stuff like that? After a while, you’ve got to do something. So music, in many ways, is a very good profession because there are so many things you can do. If you don’t play, you can teach. If you don’t teach, you can conduct. If you can’t conduct, you can talk, just like I do right now, and so on.

You have famously large hands. Did that help you with the violin?

Itzhak Perlman: Large hands do not help you with the violin. You need average hands. Large hands help you with playing the piano, playing the cello, maybe playing the viola, but playing the violin with large hands is not a plus. Sometimes it’s a minus because the spaces on the violin are smaller. But I managed!

Do you still practice?

Itzhak Perlman: Yes. I do at least 20 minutes a day. That’s good if I do it. For me, the practicing is not so much how much you practice, it’s the how often. At my age, it’s how often. If I do something every day, that’s good, rather than do a couple of hours one day and then not do anything for three or four days. That’s bad. So it’s the often-ness. I don’t think that’s a word. It’s to do it as often as possible. If you do it every day, your hands are familiar.

What’s the connection of creativity and playing music? We read about people like Einstein, who said when he was having trouble with a problem, he would play his violin to release his creativity.

Itzhak Perlman: I don’t know. To be a musician, you are re-creating. When you’re a composer, you’re creating music, but when you’re a performer, you’re recreating what’s written. A lot of people connect certain things to music. Einstein felt that that helped him. I know that a lot of people love to hear music when they don’t feel well, and music is something that helps them. I know that, in Israel, when things were not going well — there were rockets coming up — the concert halls were full of people that came to hear concerts. That helped them forget.

Didn’t you say your music teacher wanted you to go to museums and to paint?

Itzhak Perlman: Yes, Ms. DeLay. Absolutely. You have to be a complete person because there are so many parallels. You’re talking about colors, air; we’re talking about colors; we talk about paintings.

Do you paint?

Itzhak Perlman: No. But for me, a harmony is a painting, and then when you play something and the phrase is a very special phrase — I always tell my students, I say, “It’s not like you go to a museum and you see a painting and it’s ‘nice, nice, nice, nice.’ Then you see the Mona Lisa and you just say ‘nice, nice, nice,’ and you just go away.” I say, “No, if there’s a special harmony, a great harmony, you have to say, ‘That’s something special,’ and you have to show that in the way you phrase it.” So you have to tell the audience, “I am aware that this is a special moment in this piece.” If you are aware of that, everybody will be aware of it, and if you just pass by a great work of art, and you just go, “Oh, nice, nice, nice, nice,” then nobody’s going to be aware of that.

People say that there is a lot of talent out there, but is there an extra nonmusical quality that makes somebody succeed?

Itzhak Perlman: What is the definition of success in music? That has changed, as well, because it used to be that if you were not playing at Carnegie Hall with orchestras and solos, you were not a success. This is not the case today. Today you can be a success with so many other things. You can be a successful teacher, successful chamber music player, a successful soloist, and successful at all three. But it’s not as pure as it used to be. “People use more of their imagination,” is what I said to my students because a lot of them who are very, very talented come to a point. “What do I do with my life in music?” Those who are able to figure out and be imaginative, those are the ones that succeed. It doesn’t have to be in one thing. It doesn’t have to be, “If I cannot do this, then I can’t do anything. “ There are so many opportunities.

Is it more exciting to be in music now?

Itzhak Perlman: I think it’s very exciting to be a musician. I don’t think it’s more or less. It’s just exciting, and it’s different. It’s absolutely different. Management used to have programs where you could play 50 concerts a year in little towns and stuff like that. They don’t have that anymore, so you have to do something else. You have to figure out. I know some of my students, they’re involved in music festivals. They become involved in chamber music. They become involved in a combination of stuff. I always say, “You’ve got to use your imagination to see what you want to do, especially since you love it.”

If you’re a musician and you just do it because your parents told you to do it — you have to have it in your gut. You have to say, “If I can’t do this, I’m going to do this. I can figure this one out. Maybe I can do this as a group,” or whatever it is. You have to be imaginative.

Are you ever worried that in this age of techno music and computers and this kind of “too-much-information age,” that classical music won’t have a place in the future?

Itzhak Perlman: Classical music is here to stay, and it’s always going to have a future. We’ve proved it. It’s lasted a long time.